Friday 10 December 2010 03.34 EST
First published on Friday 10 December 2010 03.34 EST

Australia, trounced in the Adelaide Test and 1-0 down in the Ashes series, have not brought Shane Warne out of retirement, which should bring to an end the year's most nonsensical sports story. But they have done something equally extraordinary: they have responded by giving England the chance to play a Beer match.

Michael Beer was the third-choice spin bowler for Victoria a year ago and his chances of ever playing first-class cricket were receding, but he moved to Western Australia and now finds himself in Australia's Test 12 on his home ground at the Waca.

Beer is the first Australian spinner to be plucked from obscurity for at least two weeks, replacing another slow-left-arm bowler, Xavier Doherty, the last player to be unfortunate enough to be asked to look the Warne legend in the eye. The odds are that others will follow until Australian cricket lovers learn to look to the future again.

Australia's squad shows four changes from the side beaten in Adelaide. Simon Katich is out of the rest of the series because of a damaged achilles and Marcus North and Doug Bollinger have also been dropped.

There is a recall for Phillip Hughes, the unconventional New South Wales opener, who has just made four and nought for NSW against South Australia in Sydney, and for Mitchell Johnson, Steve Smith and Ben Hilfenhaus, who all return to the squad after being omitted in Adelaide. Hilfenhaus's ability to bowl into the wind at the Waca could win him selection ahead of Peter Siddle, whose hat-trick at The Gabba now seems a long time ago.

But it is Beer's selection that has stunned Australian cricket. He made his first-class debut exactly two months ago and he has played only four matches at the Waca, where he must now help to prevent an England victory that would retain the Ashes. One of those four games came against England when he took career-best figures of five for 209. He has 16 first-class wickets in his career at a shade under 40 runs each. It is solid, but hardly spectacular.

Beer is a Ponting pick, in as much as Ponting appears not to want Nathan Hauritz anywhere near the side, a stance that could look indefensible if Australia do not turn the series. He is also a Greg Chappell pick, in as much as Australia's first full-time selector is always tempted in adversity by a punt on an unknown.

Allan Border, the captain who sorted out Australia's last crisis a generation ago, said of Beer's selection: "I'm in a state of shock. They might just go with four quickies and just have Beer around the squad."

Andrew Hilditch, Australia's chairman of selectors, hinted that Beer was likely to play. "Michael is a left-arm orthodox spinner who has been very impressive at domestic level this year," he said. "He took wickets against England in the tour match earlier this summer and we expect he will bowl very well against the English on his home ground."

Beer was also favoured by Warne himself, which will encourage him, but which was also much in keeping with Warne's habit of promoting players from within his own clubs. At Hampshire, he wanted Nic Pothas to be England's wicketkeeper, among many others, and swung Michael Lumb an IPL deal with Rajasthan Royals. Now he has advocated a spinner who was Victorian cricket's most successful club bowler last season when he played for Warne's old club, St Kilda.

His selection did have an impact on the Bringbackwarne.com rescue fund, which seeks to induce Warne to come out of retirement and which had languished around AUD$4,500 (£2,800) for most of the morning, but which leapt past AUD$5,000 within an hour of Beer's selection becoming public.

Warne has his own celebrity chat show and is in danger of having to interview himself; Beer is so unknown that he does not even have a statistics page on the Cricket Australia website. At the start of the series he had roughly 30 followers on Twitter, which means that not everybody will be aware that he bagged England midway through the first Test at The Gabba, saying: "The Barmy Army are the only Poms who are performing." He has yet to make his international debut and he has already pulled off the least successful sledge in Australian cricket history.

Australia want Beer to fulfil the holding role that Doherty found beyond him, and if he proves capable then Western Australia's coach, Mickey Arthur, will take much of the acclaim. Arthur has likened Beer to South Africa's slow-left-armer Paul Harris, another spin bowler short of panache who eked out an existence at international level.

"I think our chap Michael Beer is probably one of the best left-arm spinners I have seen in Australia," Arthur said after England's six-wicket win against Western Australia in Perth last month. "Michael Beer, if he were South African, would be pushing quite hard for selection. The role he has played for us through the summer has been exceptional. There are not many spinners who can come on, especially in Perth, and stop a game. He has been able to do that."